In Nimbusmon's Shadow
by Frost Deejn
Summary: Sequel to Rainbow Key. Talya and Hebimon are still at large in the digiworld. The digidestined are on their trail, but will they survive catching them?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming or profiting from Digimon.

Note: Takes place a few years after the end of Season 2; contains Season 2 spoilers. Sequel to _Rainbow Key._

In Nimbusmon's Shadow  
Chapter 1

It had been weeks since the digidestined faced the mysterious thief Talya and her digimon, Hebimon. They had failed to retrieve the powerful Rainbow Key which Talya had stolen, and there had been no sign of the girl or her digimon since.

The digidestined needed help, so they called on Izzy. They waited at T.K.'s apartment for Izzy to arrive.

While their digimon sat listening intently, T.K., Kari, Cody, Ken, and Yolei talked about how they might go about finding the Key. Davis and Veemon watched out the window impatiently.

"Izzy said he has some information about Talya," Cody mentioned. "Maybe it will help us."

"He's coming," Davis announced. "And there's someone with him."

Everyone crowded to the window and watched Izzy approach the building, Tentomon in tow. The woman walking beside Izzy was several years older and a little taller than he. She was very slender, with long, straight black hair, and unfashionably light skin.

"Do you think that's the woman he's been talking about?" Kari wondered.

"Tsukiyo? It must be," Yolei said.

A couple of minutes later they arrived.

"Hello, Izzy," T.K. said. "Who is this?"

"I'd like you all to meet Tsukiyo Nishiyama." Izzy presented her as though she were a visiting royal.

The woman bowed to the room. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Izzy has told me so much about all of you."

Izzy continued the introduction. "This is T.K., his digimon Patamon, Kari and Gatomon, Yolei and Hawkmon, Cody and Armadillomon, Ken and Wormmon, Davis and Veemon."

She bowed to each in turn. "Ah, Davis. You're the one who stood up to Myotismon and saved the world. And you, Cody, are the responsible one with the digieggs of Knowledge and Reliability. Kari, Izzy tells me you're caring and compassionate and wise beyond your years. T.K., you're probably the most experienced digidestined there is, and you've cultivated great leadership skills. Yolei, you're the one who's good with computers. Izzy says you're his protégée." Yolei blushed. Tsukiyo came to Ken. "Ken Ichijouji. I've wanted to meet you for years. Izzy says he wants to watch us play chess. I always beat him."

Ken bowed respectfully. "It's an honor to meet you, Dr. Nishiyama. I loved your book _Everyday Evolution_."

She smiled, showing a hint of shyness. "Please, call me Tsukiyo; 'Dr. Nishiyama' makes me sound so old."

"Now that we're all acquainted," said Izzy, "why don't you show them what you've found, Tsukiyo?"

"Of course." She turned to T.K. "Does your computer have an internet connection?"

"Of course." He set up his computer for her.

She logged on to her e-mail and pulled up a message written in Russian. "Talya: what do we know about her? Basically just her name, that she's Russian, and that she has found her way to the digital world. Now, we all know the digital world is geographically synched with this world, in that digiports will open in predictable locations relative to their origin, so we know she came from Japan or somewhere near here. Assuming she came from Russia, she would have come through a digiport in either Sakhalin or the Kuril islands, Khabarovsk Krai, or Primorsky Krai. My initial search for missing children in those regions turned up no matches, but I realized if she had run away from an orphanage, it wouldn't necessarily have been reported, since that would damage the orphanage's reputation. I looked up the known orphanages in those regions, made some discreet inquiries, and received this response." She scrolled down until an image appeared on the screen: a picture of a familiar redhead. "Natalya Kuznetsova disappeared from an orphanage near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk about a year ago. According to one of the caretakers at the orphanage, Talya never made any friends and got mediocre grades. The only thing she excelled at was computers."

"That's her," Ken confirmed.

"So now we know who she is, but we still don't know how to find her," T.K. observed.

"We're still working on that," Izzy said. "But we have a couple of theories that could prove helpful."

"If my hypothesis about how the Key works is correct," Tsukiyo explained, "it should be possible to track it while it's being used."

T.K. nodded decisively. "Good. While you and Izzy work on that, I think the digimon should search the digiworld for her."

As Izzy and Tsukiyo left, Tsukiyo looked troubled.

"What's wrong?" asked Izzy.

"Did I act too...stuck up?"

"Of course not. What makes you think that?"

"I'm just worried about first impressions."

Izzy looked at her with curiosity. "You never seem to worry what your colleagues and clients think of you; does it matter what my friends think of you?"

"Yes," she answered softly. "It matters a lot."

* * *

A few days later, Izzy and Tsukiyo asked Ken to help them design a device to track the fluctuations the Key caused in the digital world. When they finished for the day, they decided they needed to do something to unwind, so Ken challenged Tsukiyo to a game of chess. 

Tsukiyo was looking through her black pieces and Ken's white. She frowned and slowly moved her bishop to an exposed position.

Izzy watched curiously, wondering why she was sacrificing her bishop.

But Ken didn't take the bishop, instead he moved his knight away from it.

"Hmm." Tsukiyo's frown deepened. "He's three moves from checkmating me," she explained to Izzy, "and there's nothing I can do about it."

Sure enough, Ken won in three moves.

"Good game," Tsukiyo complimented as she cleared the board. "I haven't lost in years."

"You had me worried for a while," Ken said, smiling. "Especially after you forced me to sacrifice my queen."

"We need to play again sometime. But I should get going; I've got a lecture to give in the morning. Bye, Izzy. Bye Ken."

Izzy went to the window and watched Tsukiyo walk to the bus stop.

"Ken, can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Izzy closed his eyes. "I've never been good at...dealing with people. Socially, I'm a complete idiot." He sighed. "How do I find out if she feels the same about me as I feel about her without letting her know how I feel about her?"

"Why don't you just ask her?"

"Because if she just wants me for a friend I don't want to do anything to risk losing her as a friend. Do you know what I mean?"

Ken nodded. He knew very well.

Izzy glanced at him and saw a look on his face he didn't understand at first. Then he laughed.

Ken glanced at him curiously. "What's so funny?"

"Who is she?"

"Who?"

"The girl you were just thinking about." Izzy realized he was being presumptuous and rephrased his statement. "The person you were just thinking about."

"No one," Ken claimed unconvincingly.

"Someone I know?"

He coughed politely and hoped he wasn't blushing. "Maybe you should take Tsukiyo to a restaurant or on a picnic without mentioning the word 'date.' That way, you can see if she acts like you're on a date, and if she doesn't then it wasn't a date and you can still be friends."

"That's a good idea. I'll have to try it. You should too."

Ken nodded, then realized Izzy had tricked him into admission. He tried to cover. "Yes, if I ever happen to want to know if someone likes me, I will have to try that."

"Just tell me who it is," Izzy said with an amused half-smile. "Someone I know, obviously, otherwise you would tell me."

Ken blushed a deep red. "I don't want her to know. Not yet. I want to wait until the right time."

"I understand. Why don't you just tell me a nickname for her, so we can talk about her without risking her overhearing?"

Ken thought about it for a moment. "Ever since this dream I had about her, I've been comparing her to wisteria."

"So she's purple, fragrant, and grows on vines?"

Ken rewarded the joke with a wry smile. "It's called a simile, Izzy. It's a poetic convention."

"I understand. I think Tsukiyo's name is very appropriate; she reminds me of moonlight."

Ken mentally agreed that, poetically speaking (and he was a closet poet), Tsukiyo was a river gently rippling in the moonlight, while Yolei was a wisteria vine in full bloom on a bright morning.

* * *

The following day, Izzy rather awkwardly suggested to Tsukiyo that they go out to dinner while they brainstormed ways to stop Talya from using the Key once they found her. She agreed, though she insisted on paying. Izzy wasn't sure whether that was a good sign. 

"If I'm right that Talya becomes Nimbusmon through the same process that a digimon digivolves to the next level, would there be any way to keep her from digivolving?" Tsukiyo inquired as she poked at a plate of steaming fried calamari.

Izzy thought about it as he twirled spaghetti around his fork. "No easy way. Unless we found a functioning control spire."

"What's a control spire?"

"Control spires were towers built by the digimon emperor that prevented digivolution."

"Who is the digimon emperor?"

He realized he'd never told her about that. They talked about the digital world all the time, but usually only discussed the science of it, rarely the history, though he had told her some of his adventures with the older digidestined. "It seems like so long ago," Izzy mused. "Time certainly moves in strange ways sometimes."

"You should read my book _Speed of Thought_. But tell me about this digimon emperor first."

Izzy smiled at her impatience. He was going to tease her. "When I first went to the digital world, we could only go there if something was wrong, something we needed to fix. But then, a few years ago, a human appeared in the digital world who had a new, more powerful digivice that could open a digiport from any computer. We didn't know how he got it, or where he came from. He built the control spires and created dark rings to enslave digimon."

"Like the dark gears you had to deal with?"

"Exactly. Same principle. This human called himself the digimon emperor. He was highly intelligent, but used his genius for evil. T.K., Kari, Davis, Yolei, and Cody were chosen by the powers of the digital world to oppose him. They were given digivices as powerful as his, and their digimon were able to armor digivolve, which wasn't affected by the control spires. But the emperor seemed invincible. He somehow created his own digimon based on the most powerful parts of other digimon, which he fittingly named Kimeramon. It destroyed everything in its path, and all of their digimon together weren't enough to stop it. Davis found the Golden Digiegg, which allowed Veemon to digi-armor digivolve to Magnamon, but even he wasn't powerful enough to destroy Kimeramon until the digimon emperor's own digimon turned against him and sacrificed his energy to aid Magnamon."

Tsukiyo listened, her eyes wide. "Why did the emperor's digimon betray him?"

"The emperor was cruel even to his own partner. The digimon hoped he could not only stop his partner from destroying the digidestined, but somehow save him from evil. And he did. It was his death that made the emperor see the error of his ways. He left the digital world, and we all hoped he would never show his face around there again." He examined Tsukiyo's expression carefully. Did she suspect the truth? She knew about Ken's disappearance, and surely it couldn't have escaped her notice that he'd made no mention of Ken in the entire story. But she didn't seem to have made the connection yet.

"_Did_ he ever go back to the digital world?"

He struggled to keep a straight face. He'd keep dropping clues until she guessed. "I've told you that digimon come back as digieggs after they die."

She nodded. "So the emperor's digimon was reborn. You've also told me digieggs can appear in our world, and nothing guarantees the emperor was even reunited with his digimon, so you haven't answered my question. Except you seem to think you have...so the answer must be affirmative." She kept staring at him, and he could see the complex mechanisms of her mind working to unravel this enigma. Her eyes dropped to the table and she sat back in her chair. "Wormmon," she whispered. "Wormmon was the emperor's digimon, and the emperor was none other than sweet little Ken Ichijouji, boy genius." She flicked her eyes up at him. "Wasn't he?"

Izzy nodded. Tsukiyo laughed. "It makes sense, though. His disappearance, his even-more-mysterious reappearance, the rumors that he returned with amnesia, which you know is nearly always caused by psychological trauma." Her smile disappeared at that thought. "He must have endured so much. No wonder he's so dedicated to the digital world now; he's a traitor to evil. Traitors make the most dedicated and dangerous of foes, not to mention the most bitterly hated."

An hour later, Izzy walked Tsukiyo to her apartment. She stopped at her door and turned to him. Her shyness showed itself again, and she lowered her eyes to the floor as she spoke. "I had a wonderful time tonight. I hope we do this again soon."

"Next time, you can pick the restaurant," Izzy said in a flimsy attempt to lighten the mood.

Tsukiyo laughed nervously. They stood in awkward silent for a moment, neither looking directly at the other. "Goodnight," Tsukiyo said, then entered her apartment.

"Goodnight," Izzy replied before her door closed.

Tsukiyo went to her window and watched Izzy walk away.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"I _am_ going with you," Tsukiyo insisted.

"No. No, Tsukiyo. It's too dangerous," Izzy argued.

"I helped design the tracking device. Why shouldn't I help you use it?"

"You don't even have a digimon! The digital world can be a very dangerous place."

"You think I don't know that?" Tsukiyo retorted. "You've told me enough about it. I don't care; I'm going with you whether you like it or not."

T.K., Davis, Kari, Yolei, and Cody watched the argument with a mixture of impatience and amusement. Ken and the digimon were waiting for them in the digital world with the tracking device they hoped would lead them to the Key and Talya. This disagreement was costing them valuable time.

"Shall we put this to a vote?" Izzy asked.

"There's nothing to vote on; it's my choice to go with you. You can't stop me."

"She has a point there," Yolei pointed out. "She'll just follow us through the digiport. I guess you could tie her to a chair or something."

"I take my mom and grandpa all the time," Cody added.

"I'm with Izzy. It's just too dangerous to take someone without a digimon to look for Nimbusmon and Dokuhebimon," T.K. opined.

"I have to agree," Kari admitted. "I'd hate for anything to happen to you."

They looked to Davis to break the tie.

"Dudes, if she wants to come let her come. Let's just go; Ken is gonna be wondering what's keeping us. Digiport open!"

Tsukiyo gave Izzy a smug, triumphant smile, then followed the younger destined. Izzy sighed and jumped through before the digiport closed.

"What took you so long?" Ken asked. Then he spotted Tsukiyo and made an educated guess.

"Did you get any reading on the Key yet?" Izzy inquired.

Ken held up the tracking device, which looked something like a Geiger counter crossed with a compass. "I got a reading a few minutes ago. She's northeast of here, but I can't tell how far."

"There's one way to find out," said Cody.

The searchers set out. They decided to stay in a group so they would have a chance against Nimbusmon and Dokuhebimon when and if they found them. Every once in a while the tracking device would pick up the Key, and they would adjust their course accordingly.

Yolei gravitated toward Tsukiyo. "What do you do for a living?" she asked bluntly.

"I'm a scientific consultant, I give lectures, and I'm a theoretician."

"That's fascinating," Yolei said. "I can see why you get along so well with Izzy and Ken."

Kari joined them. "Do you think Talya was in the digiworld the whole time between her disappearance and when she stole the Key?"

"I don't know. It's entirely possible that she managed to hide that whole time, though a human in the digital world isn't exactly inconspicuous."

"It must have been lonely with only her digimon for company," Kari speculated.

Tsukiyo shook her head slightly. "She was raised in a Russian orphanage, so it may have been an improvement. Children in _dyetskiye doma_ are often neglected, forbidden from owning personal possessions, stigmatized for life simply for being abandoned, any expression of their individuality discouraged. And those are the lucky ones."

"That's so sad," said Kari.

Ken stopped and turned around. "We're very close," he said.

"How can you tell?" asked T.K.

"The reading I got a few minutes ago and the one I just got were twenty degrees apart."

"Uh oh. Tentomon, you'd better digivolve."

"Tentomon digivolve to...Kabuterimon!"

Kari gave him an amused look. "You just wanted to show off for Tsukiyo, didn't you?"

"Maybe," Izzy admitted.

Ken looked down at the tracking device. It wasn't registering, but he still had a feeling he knew which way to go. "This way," he said, and started deeper into the forest.

The trees became larger, closer, and more shadowy. Then they came to a place where the trees grew so close a human couldn't squeeze between the trunks. The branches had a twisted, unnatural look.

"Cody, do you think Digmon could get through this?" asked T.K. in a whisper.

Cody looked to Armadillomon, who nodded.

"Do it."

"Armadillomon armor-digivolve to...Digmon!" He dove into the ground, plowing through the tangled roots to clear a path.

After only a few meters, the trees stopped at the edge of a marshy meadow. Talya stood on a low hill, looking in their direction.

"We've got you now, Talya. It's over!" Davis boasted.

"You wissshh." The hissed words came from the trees behind them. The digidestined looked up into the glowing eyes of Dokuhebimon. "Venom Spit!"

The attack hit Kabuterimon squarely, and he tumbled back for a few seconds before summoning a counter attack. "Electro Shocker!"

Dokuhebimon dodged out of the way.

The other digimon digivolved and faced their attacker. Dokuhebimon was swift, she was powerful, and the shadows of the canopy afforded her plenty of cover. She attacked again without giving them time to prepare. "Rattle Attack!" The vibrations rammed the cluster of digimon and children like a solid earthquake, throwing them all off balance. When the shaking stopped, Dokuhebimon was nowhere to be seen.

"Spread out!" T.K. ordered.

The digimon obeyed instantly. Pegasusmon, Nefertimon, Aquilamon, Exveemon, Stingmon, and Kabuterimon took to the air and began searching the treetops for Dokuhebimon.

A cool breeze rustled the leaves, carrying the scent of rain. The digidestined looked behind them and realized Talya had transformed herself into Nimbusmon.

"Thunder Staff!"

The digimon dodged Nimbusmon's attack. Aquilamon flew toward her. "Grand Horn!"

"Lightning Net!" Nimbusmon caught Aquilamon with her attack, swung him around, and sent him crashing into the trees.

"Rattle Attack!" Dokuhebimon charged Nefertimon and Pegasusmon.

"Spiking Strike!" Stingmon flew between Nefertimon and Pegasusmon and dissipated Dokuhebimon's attack before it could impact them.

"Venom Spit!"

Stingmon dodged her attack, then circled around and tackled her. He looked up, hoping for back-up, but the other digimon were either busy fighting Nimbusmon or had already been neutralized. Dokuhebimon wriggled out of his grasp. "Venom..." before she could deliver her attack, she was struck from behind by Exveemon and de-digivolved.

"Thanks," Stingmon said.

"No problem."

They both joined the battle against Nimbusmon, but their attacks seemed to have no effect on the cloud-digimon.

Then Stingmon noticed Hebimon creeping toward the group of humans, who had retreated into the shelter of the trees. Nimbusmon took advantage of his distraction. "Thunder staff!"

He de-digivolved and fell to the ground. Immediately after picking himself up, he went after Hebimon. "Sticky net!"

His attack stuck her to a tree, but she quickly broke through. "Serpent twister!" She sent a whirlwind that picked him off the ground and swirled him around before dropping him in a dizzy heap. "I don't want to fight you," Hebimon claimed. "I have no desire to be your enemy. My partner and I just want some peace and quiet."

"Then you shouldn't have stolen the Key," Wormmon replied as he struggled to regain his balance.

"It's the only way Talya can achieve her dream."

"Which is?"

"To be a digimon, like us."

They heard a shout of victory from Davis and looked back at the battle. Nimbusmon was retreating.

"She's getting better, but she still can't stay a digimon for very long," Hebimon told Wormmon as Nimbusmon landed and turned back into a human.

"Surrender, Talya!" T.K. called.

"Not yet! Let me show you a few more tricks first!" Talya lifted her arms, and the trees behind the digidestined began to bend. They twisted their branches forward until they touched the ground, trapping the humans in a cage. Talya clenched her fist and a bus suddenly appeared around Exveemon. It came crashing to the ground; Exveemon de-digivolved to Veemon. Then Talya made a quick gesture with one hand, and the ground shook and a chasm opened, pulling the digidestined downward. The remaining digimon flew to their partners' rescue.

Hebimon slipped past Wormmon and joined her partner. Wormmon thought about following her, but he was too worried about Ken. By the time he reached him, the ground had stopped shaking and Talya and Hebimon were nowhere in sight.

The digidestined and thier digimon climbed out of the chasm. They were scratched up, dirty, and shaken.

"Are you okay?" Izzy asked Tsukiyo.

"Yeah. That was incredible!"

Ken shook his head. He was clearly much more disturbed by the Key's power than Tsukiyo was. "The way she could control the digital world...I've never seen anything like it."

No one said anything for a moment. Some of them remembered the Digimon Emperor doing things like that. Cody broke the silence. "So what do we do now?"

T.K. clenched his jaw with determination. "I'll tell you what we're not going to do: we're not going to give up. The next time we find Talya she won't beat us so easily."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The deeper they got in the forest, the larger the trees became. They'd been walking for hours, and they felt like insect crawling around the roots of the giant trees. The few glimpses they had of the sky through the canopy revealed that the sun had set and the darkness would soon be complete.

"Let's set up camp," T.K. suggested. "We should recover out strength and keep looking in the morning."

"Someone should stay awake and guard," Cody said.

"With this many people, two people should stay up to guard," said Tsukiyo. "That way they can keep each other awake. As soon as one of them gets tired, he or she should wake up someone else, so at least one person will be fully alert at all times."

"But the digimon should get all the rest they can, so they should be exempt," Izzy added.

"I'm not going to argue with that," said Tentomon drowsily.

T.K. and Cody decided to take the first watch. They talked for almost an hour before T.K. got tired and woke Ken. Soon after, Cody grew sleepy and woke up Yolei, at Ken's request.

They sat near the low fire. Nothing was visible by its light past the sleeping humans and digimon, and the forest was silent. It felt like their little camp was its own universe floating in endless emptiness. Ken shivered.

"Are you cold, Ken?"

"Not really."

The night's stillness was broken by Davis snoring.

Yolei laughed softly. Ken glanced at her, admiring the color of her hair in the firelight. She noticed him looking at her. "I don't know how we get any sleep camping with Davis," she explained.

"It's one of life's mysteries, I guess." He looked away. "What do you think of Izzy and Tsukiyo?"

"I think they were made for each other," Yolei replied.

"I agree. I don't think Izzy would be completely happy with anyone who wasn't his intellectual equal."

"You know, it's funny: I've always been the smartest person in most of my classes. I used to wonder if I was a genius. Then I met Izzy and you and Tsukiyo. Being around you makes me feel average."

"Yolei, you're very smart..." Ken objected.

"But I like it. I like feeling average, being around people I can talk to without feeling like a nerd. It's lonely at the top." She smiled at him. "But I guess you know that."

He smiled back. Her smiles were contagious.

He looked away and scooted a few inches further from the fire. "Davis tells me that you have a new boyfriend," he said casually.

"I wouldn't really call him my boyfriend," Yolei said. Her smile widened, but it was no longer for him. "His name's Tommi. I met him in school. We've been hanging out lately, that's all."

He didn't believe her, but nodded. "I'll have to tell Davis he was over exaggerating."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I mean, I really like him; he's really, really cute and so sweet. Last week he left a rose in my locker with a note..."

"Oh really? He sounds..." Ken yawned loudly. "He sounds nice."

"And you sound tired. Maybe you should wake someone else up and get back to sleep."

"I think you're right. Any preferences on who you'd like to keep you company next?"

"You're so considerate, Ken." She thought about it. She had the suspicion that Tsukiyo and Izzy had come up with the two-person watch as an excuse to spend some time alone together, and she was more than happy to collude with that plan. "I'd kind of like to talk to Tsukiyo a little."

Ken roused Tsukiyo, then crawled into a sleeping bag. He lay awake for some time, wondering why he had to bring up her new boyfriend. He didn't think he was jealous. Why would he be? Yolei wasn't his girlfriend. He didn't deserve her...not after the things he did as the emperor. He immediately berated himself for thinking that way. It didn't usually bother him anymore, but sometimes the guilt returned, usually late at night, like this.

Tsukiyo thought Ken had looked kind of upset when he woke her up, but maybe he was just tired.

"What did you and Ken talk about?" she asked Yolei.

"He asked me about my new boyfriend."

"You have a _new_ boyfriend? Do you wear them out quickly?"

Yolei knew she'd meant it jokingly, but she was still a little defensive. She didn't know how much Izzy had told Tsukiyo about her dating history. "I've had lots of boyfriends in the past, but I was too young to have a serious boyfriend, and it's different with Tommi. Besides, how am I supposed to find out what I want in a boyfriend if I don't shop around a little?"

"I wouldn't know," Tsukiyo answered bluntly.

Yolei stared at her. "You can't mean that Izzy is your first boyfriend."

"Or at least the closest thing I've ever had to one."

She arched her eyebrows in disbelief. "How old are you, twenty-something? And you've never had a boyfriend before?"

Tsukiyo looked a little embarrassed, though she didn't blush. "I'm twenty-six, and I've just been too busy with my education and my career." She reconsidered. "No, that's not true. The truth is I never wanted a boyfriend, I never looked for one, and I was surprised when I met Izzy and realized that I actually had feelings for him." She seemed to think that was all she needed to say, and stared thoughtfully into the fire.

Yolei couldn't stand leaving it at that. "And?" she pressed.

"And what?"

"Why did you think you would never have a boyfriend? Didn't you want to fall in love?"

She shrugged. "Not really. As soon as I learned about love—from a fairy tale my teacher read to the class when I was about eight—I gave up hope of ever feeling it myself."

"You didn't learn about love from your parents?" Yolei queried.

Tsukiyo's face melted into a look as bitter as if she'd just bitten down on a fat, juicy aloe vera leaf. "Those two. They've been married for almost three decades, and I'm convinced they've hated every single day of it. No, I did not learn of it from _them._"

"Then how did you know you felt that way about Izzy?"

"I didn't, at first," she admitted, the bitterness receding back to wherever it came from. "I had feelings for him that I'd never felt before. I contemplated them, analyzed them, dissected them, then tried to disregard them and concentrate on the professional friendship we were forming. But they wouldn't go away. I never imagined in my wildest hypothetical extrapolations that romantic attachment would be so powerful...that it can pull you in even when you don't want it."

"You really do love him, don't you?"

Tsukiyo didn't answer. She was embarrassed at how much she just revealed. It was more than she'd told to Izzy, in fact. "You look tired," she told Yolei.

"I am starting to feel sleepy. Maybe I'll go to bed. Goodnight, Tsukiyo."

"Goodnight."

Yolei woke up Izzy, as she'd planned, and went to sleep.

Izzy sat down beside Tsukiyo. He didn't talk for a moment as he searched his brain for conversation-starters that weren't insipid. "It must be pretty late," he finally said, even though he was wearing a watch. "It's hard to tell without seeing the sky."

"Yes. It's hard to imagine how high the trees are without actually looking at them. I was just thinking that they might not grow in the digital world, they could simply appear at any size. But there would have to be some mechanism that instructs the raw data to form that shape. It's really fascinating to speculate. You know, Izzy, I don't know if it's appropriate to say this, but I've never had a boyfriend before."

After all the time he'd spent with Tsukiyo, Izzy was used to her random subject changes, but this still caught him off guard. "I've never had a girlfriend before. I spent my time concentrating on my studies instead, both by choice and by everyone else's choice."

Tsukiyo nodded understandingly. "Izzy...I'm not good at talking about my feelings..."

"Neither am I," he said quietly.

After a moment, she smiled. "Okay then. It's a relief to have that cleared up."

Izzy released a breath he'd been holding with a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. "Yes. It is."

They talked quietly about the science of the digital world for the rest of the night.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Only a few hours after resuming their search the next morning, the digidestined came upon a fortress hidden deep in the forest.

"Do we think it's Talya's?" T.K. asked no one in particular.

Ken nodded. "The readings are as strong as they were the last time we found her."

"Who built this place?" Yolei wondered.

"Talya could have found a way to build it using the Key," Izzy said.

"But the real question is: how do we get in?" said Gatomon.

Ken frowned. "If she has security cameras, she probably already knows we're here. Maybe we should just try to break in."

"I think we should try to sneak in," Cody countered.

"I could burrow under a wall," Armadillomon offered.

"Maybe there's a back door," said Davis.

Kari gave him a derisive look. "Or we could walk right in the front door."

After some discussion, they decided to scout around looking for a secret entrance like the one Talya had on her last hideout. They found one concealed behind overgrown vines. They broke through the door and found themselves in a long, ill-lit hallway. The walls and floor were made of metal that clinked hollowly with each footstep.

After a few minutes of walking, Kari paused and looked around.

"What is it, Kari?" T.K. asked.

"I don't know. I'm just getting a weird feeling. Do you feel that?"

"No."

"I do," said Ken. "It's the Key. Talya's getting closer. I think the digimon should digivolve."

"You're a little too late," came an ominous, inhuman voice from above them.

They looked up. Nimbusmon and Dokuhebimon floated above a balcony near the ceiling.

"Why are you here? I have what I want. Just leave me alone!"

"The Key doesn't belong to you, Talya!" said Izzy.

"My name...is NIMBUSMON! Lightning Net!" Her attack wrapped around Izzy. She plucked him off the ground and flung him against the wall.

"Izzy!" Tentomon flew to his partner.

The other digimon digivolved.

"Golden Noose!" Nefertimon and Pegasusmon flew at Nimbusmon.

"Rattle attack!" Dokuhebimon's attack knocked them both against the wall, which rippled with the shock wave. They both de-digivolved.

"Thunder Staff!" Nimbusmon's attack struck Aquilamon, who tumbled backward, but managed to maintain his form.

Tsukiyo noticed Nimbusmon flicker. "Concentrate your attacks on Dokuhebimon!" She said. "Ignore Nimbusmon."

"Vee Laser!"

"Grand Horn!"

"Spiking Strike!"

"No! Lightning Net!" Nimbusmon's attack came too late. She flickered out like a candle at the end of its wick, and dedigivolved to Talya, falling a couple of feet to the balcony.

When the three simultaneous attacks hit Dokuhebimon, she dedigivolved, but Talya managed to catch Hebimon before she fell to the ground.

"I may have used too much of the Key's energy to stay a digimon, but I still have plenty left for this." She spread her hand toward them and an energy field appeared above them, which she slowly lowered.

Exveemon flew toward it and tried to force his way through, but when he hit it he dedigivolved and fell to the ground.

"Careful," Talya said smuggly. "It's very dangerous."

Tsukiyo stepped forward. "You don't have to fight us. Just return the Key, and we can all walk away, Miss Kuznetsova."

Talya stared at her angrily. "You're the ones who attacked _me_. I haven't done anything wrong since stealing the Key. And who are _you_ anyway? You don't even have a digimon."

"I'm Tsukiyo Nishiyama. Listen, Talya, I know you've had a hard life, but that's no excuse for what you've done. I understand what you must have been through..."

"You do _not_ understand!" Talya yelled. "How dare you presume to understand me? How dare you presume to pity me!"

"I don't pity you," Tsukiyo replied coldly. "So you're an orphan. Probably abandoned by your mother. Big deal. I was raised by my biological parents, and I bet my childhood was worse than yours. They beat me, they ignored me, the barely spoke to me after their precious son was born. They made me feel worthless. It was my fervent desire to get away from them that gave me the drive to succeed, which I have. We all suffer, maybe some more than others, but we can become stronger for it. We don't have to be enemies, Talya. We could be your friends."

Talya had listened to her speech, but now she replied in a chilly voice. "I don't need your friendship any more than I need your pity." She began contracting the energy field around them. "This is just a warning. I could destroy you right now, but I won't. But it _is_ a warning: don't come after me again." She slowly backed up through the door, Hebimon followed her. A moment later, the energy field faded away.

Tsukiyo ran to Izzy, who was just sitting up. "Izzy, are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm not a doctor or anything, but I think so."

One side of Tsukiyo's face smiled while the other side looked like it was about to cry.

"I'm okay, really," he said comfortingly. "It was brave of you to stand up to her like that."

"I had to do something. She hurt my boyfriend."

A goofy smile bloomed on Izzy's face. "Boyfriend? Did you just call me your boyfriend?"

"It's possible," she answered evasively. "That is, if you don't mind having a burakumin for a girlfriend."

"Of course I want you to be my girlfriend! What did you expect?" As if to emphasize his point, he kissed her. It was their first kiss. They drew apart a few seconds later. "I'll have to drag you along more often."

"Hey guys, let's go! She's going to get away!" Davis shouted at them from down the hall.

They searched the entire mansion and didn't find Talya or Hebimon. They hadn't expected to.

"She couldn't have gone far," T.K. said, though he didn't sound convinced.

Kari put her hand on his shoulder. "T.K., it's time to go home. She'll show up again, and we'll be ready for her."

"But the longer we wait, the more powerful she'll become."

"And the longer we chase her, the weaker we'll become," Cody argued. "We lost this round."

T.K. sighed. None of them liked letting Talya escape with the Key, but they were right. Talya had won, and had chosen to let them go. "All right. I just have the feeling that we haven't hear the last of her."

The End

* * *

Have the digidestined seen the last of Talya? Will Ken ever tell Yolei how he feels about her? And what other dangers await our heroes? Find out in the next installment of Frost Deejn's _Digimon_ fanfiction! 

Coming soon: _Dark Pyramid._


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